Protecting restricted data with On Demand Policy Management for Skype for Business Online

Protecting restricted data with On Demand Policy Management for Skype for Business Online

Learn how to protect restricted data with On Demand Policy Management for Skype for Business Online, the solution from Quest that allows you to quickly set, manage and enforce Skype for Business Online policies from a SaaS console.

Thank you for choosing to learn more about Quest's On Demand solutions, specifically our Skype for Business Policy Management module. All of our on-demand solutions are SAAS offerings, meaning you don't need to implement any new infrastructure in order to use and enjoy these products. I'm Shawny Reiner, a strategic systems consultant with Quest, and I'll be taking you through a brief demo today that shows you how easy it is to manage policies for Skype with our module.
This demo's going to focus on an important compliance requirement for data restriction. In this scenario, Ed is an employee for an aerospace company. And one of his rules is to work with external entities like contractors, which sometimes requires sharing documents electronically. He's required to follow stringent protocols. So as IT admins we need to ensure this is enforced, preventing Ed from bypassing those protocols.
Now of course, while we're using an aerospace company as an example, many industries have these same security risks and compliance needs. And any time you have external contact there is high risk of data loss. So first I'd like to show you our On Demand environment, the home page. And as you can see, when you log in to it, you've got some management options here on the side. You've got your various policy modules available, whatever you've subscribed for, and of course we have some coming in the future.
But I'm going to take you through the Skype for Business Policy module. So we're going to go and connect to that one. As you see, it's connecting into my Titan Corp. Tenant, which is my lab, and my Azure AD. And then you have the ability to add rules. So let's talk about the methodology here. Our methodology around managing policy management is basically a collection of policies, grouped into hierarchical rules, and then applied to groups of users rather than individual users.
Now these groups and users reside in your Azure AD tenant, and they can be cloud-only or hybrid objects. So our module provides you several benefits over native capabilities. One is that you can apply to groups of users rather than individual users. Natively you can only apply to individuals. So this can be very tedious and administratively difficult when you need to apply to many, many users. Even if you use PowerShell scripts, you still have to create that CSV, keep that up to date, etc. We dynamically update these policies for you as well. So that's another benefit.
So when you apply a policy natively, and then, for example, new users are hired or you need to change a setting in that policy, those updates don't take place automatically. You have to rerun your PowerShell script-- which means updating that CSV file if it's new users, etc-- before these changes take effect. With our module, all you have to do is manage the group memberships, and then we dynamically apply these for you because we're processing these rules.
And then finally, another big benefit is that we log the activities of these changes, giving you that important proof you need that you're compliant. So these benefits combine to offer you better management, tighter controls, and proof that you are compliant. So this increases the effectiveness of your security controls and compliance.
So now what I'm going to do is walk you through creating a rule. So first you want to give it a name, something that makes sense to you. In this case, we are going to place a conferencing policy that restricts the ability to do file transfer. So I'm going to just name this one, no file transfer. Obviously in your real world, you may be a little more specific.
Also I have a bunch of groups created for my Skype users, and so one of the nice things about the way this works, is it queries your Active Directory based on search criteria. So here's all my Skype users, Ed being one of these. And I'm going to Skype Demo Group 2 to add into this policy. So anybody who is a member of this, which is going to be Ed, also known as Skype User 3 in my demo here, so those users are going to get whatever policy I apply through here.
So I'm going to pick a conferencing policy. Now I've already created one, and I've used the standard PowerShell method of creating the policy. Because that's how you have to create custom policies in Office 365 for Skype, or Exchange, or any of them. So I have one set up ahead of time, and it's basically just saying that through conferencing you cannot file transfer.
So now that I have all of this done I want to enable this rule and save it. So now, as you can see, I've got a rule here, and it pops up that it's provisioning this rule and going to apply it. And so then what I'd like to do is take you through what it looks like in the client.
So here we have my client. This is me in my corporate environment, not Ed in my lab. And I just want to show you what it looks like when you are allowed to create a meeting and actually be able to attach a file. You have a little paperclip here and it pops up and you can find files and attach it. So let me disconnect from this meeting here.
So now what I'll do is I'll sign out as myself. And I'm going to log in as Ed, or as I said, Skype User Number 3 in my lab to Titan Corp. So now what I'm going to show is what it looks like when he can't actually file transfer. So first I've got to connect the meeting. Now the paper clip shows up, but when you click it, nothing happens. So effectively the policy is in place.
So that's the ease of adding policy and managing it through a module. And you could put a client, a voice, and external mobility all in one rule. And then you can start to combine rules as well, so that you can manage multiple groups, multiple users, multiple policies. So once again, thank you for joining and I hope you found this useful. If you have more questions or want to try this out, get in contact with your territory account manager, and they can help you get a trial subscription. Thank you.

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